I didn’t want to just skim along or hang out in life; I wanted to contribute. I needed to feel like my life had a purpose. This drive for meaning and purpose started when I was sixteen years old.
The summer before my high school senior year, I was an exchange student on a Swiss farm. While most kids back home were filling out college applications and stressing about the SATs, I was happily milking cows and hoping that my cute blond host brother would notice me.
For the first time in my life, I felt completely at ease, living in a peaceful, beautiful countryside surrounded by kind, authentic people. Living directly off the land felt so natural and “right.” Every morning, I awoke at dawn for the 5:00 a.m. milking. Walking barefoot down the cobblestone street of our village to the local dairy, I would exchange my buckets of fresh milk for a large wheel of cheese and some newly pressed butter. Stopping at the bakery on the way home, I’d pick out a loaf of country bread that was still warm. Before walking inside the farmhouse, I’d graze my way through the patch of overgrown fruits and vegetables next to the shed, hoping not to get busted by my host mother. Dori was a powerful, imposing woman whose generous, but no-nonsense attitude had earned her widespread respect as the matriarch of the village.
“Laurie, as-tu mangé dans le jardin encore?” (“Laurie, did you eat in the garden again?”)
“Moi? Mais non!” (“Me? Of course not!”) I protested, with blackberry stains around my mouth.
“Qu’est-ce qu’on va faire avec toi?” (“What are we going to do with you?”) Laughing, she wiped her hands on her apron.
One evening, sitting high on my favorite hillside, listening to the tinkling of cowbells on the patchwork of fields below, I wrote my first song, called, “Who am I?” Strumming along with my host brother’s guitar, I crooned out soul-searching questions about life and my place in it, as only a teenager can. Soon, I’d be finishing high school and have to decide what to do with my life.
In Switzerland, people choose at age twelve or thirteen what they want to be when they grow up. Based on that decision, they’re either officially finished with school a few years later, or they begin an academic track toward their chosen career. My nine-year-old host cousin already knew that he wanted to be a farmer like his dad. His eleven-year-old brother wanted to be an aeronautic engineer.
Both boys’ decisions were received with open praise and enthusiasm. No one looked down on the younger son for wanting to work a blue collar job, and no one scorned the oldest son for not carrying on the family tradition. In their culture, children were encouraged to follow their dreams, whatever they might be. These values made complete sense to me. I saw no point in going back to the American rat race.
“I’m going to live here for the rest of my life!” I informed my parents the day before I was scheduled to fly back home to New Jersey.
My parents balked, then made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. “If you go to college now, you can travel every summer.”
Surprise! It’s Me!
Welcome Your Passion When It Shows Up Out of Nowhere
The Harvard undergraduate course catalog was the size of a phone book. I’d gone from having very limited choices while growing up to so many options, it was overwhelming. Two weeks before classes began, I was hiking up Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire on a freshmen orientation camping trip. Our hiking leader was a senior, so I thought I’d pick her brain.
“You should check out Diana Eck’s comparative world religions class,” she said.
“Um, okay . . . thanks.”
What I was thinking is, Uh, no thanks. I had little interest in religion. I was raised in a liberal, reform Jewish family that celebrated the High Holidays and Passover—sort of like Christian families who go to church only on Christmas and Easter. Mostly, my family enjoyed the cultural aspects of Judaism, especially eating large quantities of home-cooked food with loved ones. Outside of reading prayers during holiday services, there was no mention of any sort of “God.” I had no idea if anyone in my family even believed in one.
Culturally, I was raised a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). My family was one of only a few Jewish families in our tiny rural town where the deer outnumbered the people three to one. For those who remember the popular Preppy Handbook of the 1980s, those Muffys and Biffs in the bright pink Izods were my peers. I was the preppy who carried the lime green Bermuda bag but who occasionally ate latkes.
It wasn’t easy being one of the few Jewish kids in school.
“Where are your horns?” asked Evan, the boy who sat behind me in fourth grade.
“My mom says that Jews have horns because they killed Jesus.”
“I don’t have any horns!” I said, blushing.
When the head of the junior high cheerleaders found out I was Jewish, she nicknamed me “Hanny” for Hanukkah. For years, kids refused to call me by my real name.
One morning, I came running into class one minute before the bell rang and slid into my seat. As I put down my notebook, I noticed that someone had carved a swastika on my desk.
When it was time to enroll, my trip leader’s suggestion kept niggling at my brain. Finally, I decided to give the religion class a go.
When I walked in on the first day, I half expected to be welcomed by burning incense and meditation cushions in place of desks. Instead, I found a diverse, but fairly normal looking group. There were a few stand-outs: a bald, Burmese monk in a saffron robe, a girl with multiple piercings in Guatemalan print pants, and a guy in a dress shirt and slacks wearing a prayer shawl. But everyone else was just your regular college kid in jeans.
The passionate discussions, meanwhile, were anything but the norm.
“Religion is a pathetic crutch!” said Nat, the atheist.
“What do you believe in, then?” Tammy asked, perplexed. Earlier, she had invited me to the Catholic Student Association’s spaghetti dinner.
“I think we all need to detach from our definitions of religion,” said Cho. He was a Buddhist.
I was fascinated. I still felt like an outside observer, but I loved hearing what people believe at their deepest levels and why.
Our midterms were after the holiday break, so I only had a couple of weeks to get ready. Tilting back in my chair in my bedroom in New Jersey, I contemplated the stack of books in front of me. I picked up a thin paperback with a brown and black cover called Honest to God.
Within seconds, I was drawn in. The author was an English bishop named John A. T. Robinson who, while bedridden, took a hard look at his faith. Among other things, he questioned the expectation that people must instantly feel religious when the church bell rings. For him, the most authentic prayer was “waiting for the moment that drives us to our knees.”1
As I read his words, I felt a warm
